OOP: Curses, foiled again...

[emmamariebee]

No: HPFGUIDX 61846

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, <skye_es_ilistara at y...> wrote:
> Was anyone else really disturbed/upset/confused by
> Harry's use of the Cruciatus Curse on Bellatrix
> Lestrange? 
> 
> I was utterly shocked when I saw it.  The more I
> thought about it, especially alongside the rising
> anger and hatred in Harry's soul...  I'm beginning to
> be afraid that the ending we're all awaiting at the
> end of Book Seven is a bitter victory, in which Harry
> kills Voldemort... but goes Dark himself.  
> 
> Someone please convince me it isn't true.  I don't
> want it to be true.  I'm very much afraid it's true.
> 
> Skye


I, too, was shocked--but I see it as an important point in the 
book.  HP's big pscyhological/developmental task in this book (and, 
I predict in the next two) is to come to come to acknowledge--
without becoming embittered by--the shades of grey in the world. 
Sirius, showing a wisdom I think he was just maturing into, tells 
HP, "The world is not divided into good guys and death eaters." 

What Harry has going for him that LV does not is his heart: his 
ability to experience love/caring/devotion/friendship, to live 
through the pain that that love inevitably brings, and to continue 
to love.  To do that well, he's going to have to accept that people 
(himself included) are not perfect, and accept them anyway.  

If his challenge in this book was trusting himself too much, his 
challenge in the next will be trusting himself too little: After 
all, he now knows that he himself (through his arrogance, perhaps, 
or his selfishness) got his godfather killed; he himself cast a 
forbidden curse--making him (in his own eyes, perhaps) little better 
than the death eaters.  He's going to have to accept and forgive and 
even embrace his own (as well as others') fallibilities--and 
*that's* what will enable him defeat LV.  

Casting my guesses ahead, the ending to me looks more bittersweet 
than bitter: I think Harry will come to understand the pain that 
drove LV to be what he is (and that he'll get some practice in that 
department by coming to understand--even if not actually like--
Snape).  I think Harry's growing capacity for compassion (which 
shines through at the end of OOP when he feels pain on Luna's behalf 
that she is so mistreated) will eventually--in one way or another, 
through some odd twists or turns that only JKR could conjure--lead 
to the end of LV.

Em, 
whose every thought is limned with the image of Sirius dying to save 
his godson and who (all shades of grey be damned) will never never 
never forgive JKR for killing him off . . .